D.W. Griffith: An American Life

"This magnificent and important biography...is the best ever written on the man." -The New Republic "Mr. Schickel's excellent and important biography makes it clear that when the movers of our century are tallied, D.W. Griffith, flawed genius that he was, can never lose his eminent position." -Peter Bogdanovich, The New York Times Book Review

LibraryThing Review

User Review - Mike-L - LibraryThing

This was a very, very dry read. It took me quite a while -- a hundred pages or more -- to really get into this book, and even then it became something of a chore to finish it. The amount of detailed ...Read full review

D. W. Griffith: an American life

User Review - Not Available - Book Verdict

LJ's reviewer found that Schickel's monumental biography of the man who practically invented Hollywood "presents the first great director as the author of his own destruction" (LJ 4/1/84).Read full review

About the author (1996)

Richard Warren Schickel was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 10, 1933. He received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1955. He became a noted film critic, Hollywood historian, and prolific author and documentarian. He reviewed films for Life magazine from 1965 until it closed in 1972, then wrote for Time until 2010 and later for the blog Truthdig.com. He wrote 37 books on movies and filmmakers and wrote or directed more than 30 documentaries including The Men Who Made the Movies. He wrote biographies of Woody Allen, Marlon Brando, James Cagney, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Lena Horne, and Elia Kazan. He also wrote a memoir entitled Good Morning, Mr. Zip Zip Zip: Movies, Memory, and World War II. He died from complications of dementia on February 19, 2017 at the age of 84.